Since 2008, the FBI has been assembling a massive database of biometric information on tens of millions of people, collected not just during arrests, but also for non-criminal reasons like immigration, background checks, and state licensing requirements.

And for years, the FBI has dragged its feet in complying with federal privacy laws, resulting in a scathing indictment by the Government Accountability Office for hiding important information about the scope of its face recognition program from the public. The FBI has further failed to address fundamental flaws with the facial recognition system’s accuracy, which may disproportionately impact communities of color, who are over-represented in the NGI database in the first place.